Posts Tagged ‘reputation management’

There are a lot of agencies that offer reputation management strategies and assistance in purging undesirable results from your Google search results, and many of them have a hefty price tag attached. As with most things, what you’re paying for is the convenience of outsourcing.

You need five basic things to manage the search results for your name:

– Basic search engine optimization knowledge (check out SEOmoz for a great start)
– A set of keywords you want to focus on (your name, your business name, and a few variations of each)
– An action plan of sites where you’ll place content (social networks, vanity domains, professional domains, and resume sites)
– An RSS reader filled with reputation-tracking feeds (blog searches, news searches, etc.)
– The time to devote to managing your online reputation

There are a lot of services that offer to monitor the web for any mention of you, your name, and your business. The fact is, this is something you can easily do yourself if you have the time to get set up.

For each search above, subscribe to the RSS feed of the results. This will give you a custom set of feeds to monitor for mentions of your name and a heads up for potential problems.

To monitor your SERP results for your vanity search, try a tool like SERP Monitor. This updates you when new results rank for your search.

When you combine news, blog and social monitoring with a close watch on your SERPs, you already have powerful (and free!) insight into your online reputation. The tools already exist to provide you with valuable information.

Don’t just assume that people who are searching for you online will only search for your given name exactly as you have it on your resume. A savvy employer or media professional will Google everything related to your name, including nicknames, email addresses and usernames. If you use the same username for everything, Google it to see what comes up.

For instance, I recently Googled the Twitter/AIM/Gmail username of a colleague. This led to his Twitter, snarky comments left on a chat transcript about a professional presentation, as well as Digg, StumbleUpon and random forum posts.

If the results you see when you Google your username or email address are all public facing, professional accounts, then you have nothing to worry about. However, if your social media history is spotty or you’ve been using the same username online for a really long time, you might see some things that you’d rather not show off to a potential employer.

Cleaning up:
– Log into old accounts and change details to those radically different than your real ones (age, birthday, sex, occupation). This creates reasonable doubt that the account belongs to you.
– Choose a personal username and a professional username, and never cross the streams.
– Sign up for some new sites with the username you’re trying to tidy up, and update those profiles or forums frequently for a few weeks. Hopefully you’ll see them rise in your username search results.

What do you seen when you Google your own name? Most people think that the worst thing that could happen is for something embarrassing to pop up. I’m going to disagree – the worst thing that could pop up is… nothing. If you Google your name and the results are sparse, that says that you’re not involved online. Even for those who don’t work in the online industry, having a presence online is crucial.

There are three main issues people have with their vanity search:
– Accurate but unwanted results (an old MySpace page, photos you didn’t upload, etc.)
– Inaccurate results (someone with the exact same name but a better web presence)
– Sparse results (random genealogy sites, just a few results)

In general, the first scenario is the most difficult to correct. Sparse results can actually provide a nice blank slate for your personal SEO efforts. Which scenario does your personal brand fall into?

Some tips for controlling your vanity search:
– Load the results with sites YOU control. Join social sites, create a presence, and follow through.
– Know what keyword you’re targeting. This might sound obvious, but you’ll never gain any traction on your “professional” Google results if you’re constantly referring to yourself by a nickname or a shortened version of your name.
– Ask for help. Get friends to link to your preferred personal sites and profiles by your full name (or whatever phrase you’re targeting).